The John James Newsletter. <129>

The John James Newsletter 129

Our efforts to deal with climate change have been betrayed by a lack of leadership and political cowardice, the like of which I have never seen

Malcolm Turnbull in 2010

During the five years before the last election, 41% of the private donations made to political parties came from just 76 people. This is what plutocracy looks like.

George Monbiot

Life needs no inventing. Ordinary life, so-called, is extraordinary when I pay attention

Patrick Patterson

We all know it is happening, but were we to decide to stop all emissions suddenly and today, what would life look like afterwards? I have not seen this addressed anywhere (except in generalities). The social and commercial changes would be profound, but at least we might survive.

The Practical Path to Reversing Climate Change

Most Australians (53%) believe there is a 50% or greater chance our way of life will end within the next 100 years, and a quarter that humans will be wiped out. These are surprisingly high estimates; no organisation would accept this level of risk. In response, 75% agreed we need to transform our worldview and way of life (an ‘activist’ response); 44% agreed that the world’s future looks grim so we have to focus on looking after ourselves and those we love (nihilism); and 33% agreed that we are facing a final conflict between good and evil in the world (fundamentalism).

The Earth has now warmed by more than 1 C above Preindustrial temperatures. And 1-2 C warming from this baseline in the Eemian resulted in a 10-20 foot rise in ocean levels. We’re in this temperature range now.

We have a environment secretary whose ideology urges her to see the environment as an impediment to profit, a communities secretary whose every fibre rebels against the planning system and an international trade secretary who used his previous post in government to connect mysteriously with American corporate lobby groups. We no longer have a climate change secretary, of any description. We have a government that treats the Earth’s systems, upon which our survival depends, as an afterthought. Or not a thought at all.

Less than a day after becoming the UK’s unelected PM, Theresa May closed the government’s climate change office and moved responsibility for the environment to a new Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy. The decision comes the same week as the UK’s own advisers warned that the nation was not ready for the inevitable consequences of climate change.

Theresa May’s new regime represents the most authoritarian, racist and austerity-obsessed government in British history. May plans to continue brutally cutting public services and basic welfare benefits that hit the poorest.

The US and allies have imposed sanctions because of the Crimea decided to separate from Ukraine and rejoin Russia. Tourist cruise ships no longer stop at Crimean ports and international airlines are prohibited from flying directly to the international airport at the Crimean capital, Simferopol. Students from Crimean universities cannot transfer their academic credits to universities internationally. Despite the sanctions Crimea appears to be doing reasonably well.

Practically no one in the global mainstream media is talking about how Northern and Central Siberia is burning. Scores of massive fires, some the size of cities and small states, are throwing off a great pall of smoke 2,500 miles long.

Erdogan runs a political party, Gülen operates a civil movement called Hizmet (Service). Erdogan comes out of a more traditional Sunni Turkish Islamist movement; Gülen comes out of an a-political, more Sufi, mystical and social tradition. Gülen is interested in slow, deep social change including secular higher education; Erdogan as a party leader is first and foremost interested in preserving his party’s power that operates in a populist manner trying to raise the general welfare.

Erdogan’s popularity would have dwindled with time. The Turkish economy is stagnant, his Syrian policy is a disaster, and the flagrant corruption of the people around him is getting hard to ignore. Sooner or later he would have lost an election. The officers who led the Turkish coup didn’t trust democracy enough to wait.

The damage that was inflicted on the parliament building in Ankara was huge reminiscent of the Reichstag fire in Germany in 1933. The Reichstag fire marked the end of basic freedoms and critical thinking in Germany.

The coup in Turkey has changed the geopolitical landscape overnight realigning Ankara with Moscow while shattering Washington’s plan to redraw the map of the Middle East. Whether Erdogan staged the coup or not is of little importance in the bigger scheme of things. The fact is, the incident has consolidated his power domestically while derailing Washington’s plan to control critical resources and pipeline corridors from Qatar to Europe.

The US has been fighting wars for almost 15 years. As vets have returned from their tours of duty, numbers have gone into police work when weaponry, vehicles, and military equipment have poured off distant battlefields and into police departments. And while the police were militarizing, gun companies have been marketing battlefield-style assault rifles by the millions, at the very moment when citizens can carry weapons in public.

Sections of Great Barrier Reef suffering from ‘complete ecosystem collapse’

Without enough surviving corals, the fish didn’t have the shelter and food sources they needed and had died or moved elsewhere. Without many of those fish, Marshall said the coral would face a harder time recovering, since the entire ecosystem had been degraded.

There is no return to normal. The vast expanse of contaminated forests and freshwater systems will remain a perennial source of radioactivity for the foreseeable future, as these ecosystems cannot simply be decontaminated.

There have not been so many children suffering the consequences of conflicts, crises and natural catastrophes since the Second World War. Some 250 million girls and boys, one in nine children, are forced to grow up in conflict zones. Even more are threatened by natural disasters such as droughts, floods and epidemics.

Deutsche Bank has a capital level of less that 3% (just like Lehman), and a risky asset base with derivatives exposure of more than $70 trillion, roughly the size of world GDP. Even the IMF has stated unequivocally that Deutsche Bank poses the greatest risk to global financial stability. And the IMF would be right… except for all the other banks.

The British pound could eventually hit parity with the US dollar. We are seeing seismic shifts on the foreign exchange market right now that will affect trillions of dollars of currency-related derivatives.

Forecasters expect a high pressure ridge and extreme temperatures to combine to create what is referred to as a “heat dome” over large portions of the US. A heat dome occurs when high pressure in the upper atmosphere acts as a lid, preventing hot air from escaping. The air is forced to sink back to the surface, warming even further on the way. Heat index values for parts of the U.S. are expected to reach 110 degrees or higher.

Biodiversity is below safe levels across more than half of world’s land

Habitat destruction has reduced the variety of plants and animals to where ecological systems may be unable to function, with risks for agriculture and human health. The unchecked loss of biodiversity is akin to playing ecological roulette.

The first new project is planned for South Australia, with a 100MW solar PV plant to be combined with a battery storage array of up to 40MW, Green says the plant could be in operation near Roxby Downs by early 2018, and there are plans for other similar projects around the country.